(There are advantages to doing this beyond just editing. For example, I think it would be useful to be able to set arbitrary properties on the monsters themselves at spawn time. Scripts could access these to alter behavior. It will require script changes, though, as monster IDs will no longer be stable, so I'll be adding things like "get monster ID by script name" to the scripting to accomodate that...)

However I did not get too far. Hopefully next week or the week after.

Have a good weekend!

God bless.

James

I always wondered why this game was abandoned. I thought this game if developed properly could have been a genuine competitor for Runescape. I actually left Runescape for Faldon since I thought it was more fun and traded my items in a cross-game swap.

Lots of similarities between the two, with both games developed by two brothers, launched during similar times, and were classless mmorpgs. But Runescape kept being developed and the original brothers sold it for like $100million, while Faldon just died off. Saw the original runescape creator is soon going to launch his new mmorpg Brighter Shores, while this game is still waiting for 'new client' for 20 years 

Were you ever thinking of developing Faldon or mmorpgs as your fulltime career rather than whatever path you ended down?

I think the Test-Server is down. My game allways crashes wenn i try to login.

Greets

May 6, 2026:
Added hair color, hair style, and age options to character creation.
Unified part of the network protocol relating to character display.

April 23, 2026:
Happy Saint George's Day!
Area options can now be changed in the map editor.
Music and sound have been combined into a single layer in the map editor.

April 20, 2026:
Area names, music, and sounds can now be changed in the map editor.

The new map file format is about 10X smaller, will patch more quickly, and no longer needs a separate file for versioning.

It allows an arbitrary number of properties on tiles (and properties can contain more data), so HSV/RGB colorization can be done on ground, walls, etc. at the same time.

It supports Ground 1-4 and Wall 1-2 on all Z levels. (The previous format supported Ground 1-3 on Z=0 and Ground 1-2 on Z>0, but if you had a property on the same tile, it only supported Ground 1-2 and Ground 1.)

Long term, the file format is also more extensible and maps do not have to be 512x512 (though the rest of the code does not yet support this). The way it is laid out also allows the map to be loaded one sector at a time, but I load it all at once right now.

Technically, there is one another change. Much of the map patching code, and some other network code, has been moved out of the Visual Basic code into the C code.

If this all works correctly, you won't notice any difference.

Have a good weekend!

God bless.

James

April 17, 2026:
The client now uses the new map file format.  If this change works correctly, you won't notice any difference.
File->Save now works in the map editor.

The server previously stored map files in per-sector Map Patch .MPT files.
It now stores them in Faldon Map .FMP files.

Right now, it re-encodes the map sectors before sending them to the client (or when the client uploads a map sector), because the client still uses the old format.

You'll notice this change because the client will want to repatch every sector, despite no visible change. If there IS any noticeable change let me know, because there should not be.

If there are no problems, this coming week I will move the client over to the new map file format as well.

Have a good weekend!

God bless.

James

I have been redoing the map file format. It's now slightly slower to load, 2X slower to save, and 1/10th the size. It supports Ground 1-4 on all Z levels and allows multiple properties on the same tile.

It also supports map sizes other than 512x512 (though the server won't for some time) and stores sectors in such a way that (long term) they can be loaded individually instead of loading the entire map, and it tracks them with hashing instead of version numbers.

Before I can make an update, I will need to change the map patching code on both the client and the server, as well as the server's map loading code (it uses special per-sector files, not even .MAP files right now).

So, no update this week, but hopefully one next week.

Have a happy Easter!

God bless.

James

March 27, 2026:
Added in Master Wu's 4K art update for the short forge and the teleport gates.
Ground and wall tiles can now be colorized. (With the current map format, this only works for one piece of art per tile, and only where no other properties are present.)
Holy Aura and Teleport will no longer when using the old client.